


Rid of Me

by eos_3



Category: Bleach
Genre: Community: springkink, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Partner Betrayal, Post-Betrayal, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-22 10:51:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2505188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eos_3/pseuds/eos_3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In recovery, Momo has to find her own reasons to keep living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rid of Me

**Author's Note:**

> For Springkink - Prompt - Jun 20th - Bleach, Aizen/Hinamori: blindfolds - take only what you can touch

It takes months of highly-supervised care, but from her hospital bed and under the ministrations of Captain Unohana, Momo slowly regains her health. What takes much longer is defining her sense of herself as separate from him. The captain of the Fourth Division has told her in no uncertain terms, that if she wants to fully recover, she has to accept this new reality. The one where she has a scar on her breast; the one where he shattered all that she was and smiled.

What initially gives her the will to survive is a tiny sliver of hope that there is some other explanation. But, behind that, like a great black billowing cloud, is the loathsome voice which tells her that there no such thing exists.

Sousuke Aizen has finished with her, and after having constructed such a vibrant and wondrous illusion and torn it down before her eyes, she begins to suspect he is right. Life without that person she knew, idolized, worshiped, believed in like he were some kind of god among shinigami - without him this life feels completely empty and dark, full of fools and traitors. She being the worst of them. It is not worth living in a world like this one. She misses that person who never was, misses the sense of safety he had allowed her.

_Sousuke._

His name should be bitter on her tongue, but in thinking it in saying it, she can only hear his velvety, beautiful voice saying her name in response. These are the things that are hardest to let go of, these little, tiny things that she knows are real. His voice. His name. His consistent scent of mingled ink and paper, of fragrant wood and beeswax. The things she could never have made up in her own mind, the things that regardless of his manipulation of her senses, she simply knows signify him. She misses these things, too.

While confined to her room and propped up on pillows, she sometimes takes visitors. Abarai and Toshiro stop by when they can. Miss Matsumoto and Kira always stay the longest. Momo usually wears her pink cotton robe, embroidered with peach blossoms, which is a gift from Kira. It doesn't remind her of anything from before.

Kira is hurting in his own way she knows. She isn't the only one who has been betrayed, wounded deep in their heart. In a way, wearing his gift is a small victory. If she can acknowledge that Kira is not the enemy, that he did what he did only because he was being played for a fool too, she can displace a small portion of her shame. She can also acknowledge that she exists apart from Aizen.

_Sousuke, why?_

A few of her visitors also include certain members of Fourth Division, who happen to be former Second Division operatives. They know the right questions to ask and how to ask them when her mind is still bent around and broken. Vice-captain Kotetsu never has let them push her too far, but slowly they built a ladder into her psyche. Not only do they get the answers they want, but they help her climb back out of the pit of betrayal and deception - and worst of all - her iron-clad delusions. Unless he's standing right in front of her they say, he only has what power she gives him.

Perhaps one of the worst delusions, the worst pains, completely aside from the physical, is that she truly had believed he loved her. Which was what he wanted her to believe, what he needed her to believe. He was so convincing, she wondered if he had decided he had to kill her, only because he'd momentarily convinced himself, too. If he killed her he could fully be rid of that other self, and all the emotional baggage which went with it. He could excise anything of her inside of him.

This is naive though, a claim on understanding him as she knows she never will. It helps to know that the real Sosuke Aizen, is just as pathetic as Momo Hinamori, in his own way. To have to go to such lengths not to love her, to hurt everyone around him for something so mad.

Momo knows now, that is something he does want, of all things. To be understood. Perhaps even for someone to call him out for what he is - a cold-hearted schemer, an effortless liar, a power-hungry sadist; for someone to challenge him at his own game. He's given her multiple opportunities, knowing she'd always be a fool for him, and only now can she recognize them for what they were. Openings in his armor, so wide that a hundred swords could have stabbed through. She stubbornly chose to see only what she wanted to see, however, and he took advantage wherever he could. Full advantage.

_Oh, Sousuke._

That she had allowed herself to be beguiled, to have become his lover even for a short time, doesn't disgust her perhaps as much as it should. She was his subordinate, and while what they did is against the rules, it is also generally accepted to be something that if not flaunted, can be ignored with little to no remonstrance. What disturbs her, makes her cringe inside, is that the kind, thoughtful man she thought she made love to, was not the man she was actually with.

Her experience with men and lovemaking is very limited, but she never thought her captain selfish or abusive towards her when they were intimate. He never told her that he loved her, and she'd never asked him to. Then, it was easy enough to get caught up the moment and not think about what he never said.

At least she can finally make sense of the blindfolds.

In those few times that he took her to his bed, he asked that they wear them. Momo didn't protest much, she trusted him, always assumed he knew best; she wanted so badly to please him and to receive his affection. By the time he left the Seireitei for good, she had touched nearly every inch of his skin, worshiped his body every way she knew how, every way that he wanted her to except with her gaze.

She can only wonder now, what was so terrific about her seeing him exposed, that he required such a thing. Perhaps he merely found it erotic. Deprivation of a sense which he could manipulate so easily, forcing them both to rely completely on what remained, it must have been immensely attractive. Or perhaps – though she knows she should doubt this - he was actually afraid of becoming attached to her. Maybe she even reminded him of someone else. She will never know.

In those scattered moments when she can almost still feel his hands on her, his body over her, in darkness absolute, she doesn't want to think about his reasons. It came to her that it might be better to think that Aizen really was dead, and this other person had stolen his face and his name. Momo can hold on to that, such an idea is bearable.

It means, of course, that the impostor has to be destroyed, and she is going to help kill him.

_Goodbye, Sousuke._


End file.
